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Uncanny Errors, Productive Contresens. Merleau-Ponty's

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Uncanny Errors, Productive Contresens. Merleau-Ponty's BEATA STAWARSKA UNCANNY ERRORS, PRODUCTIVE CONTRESENS. MERLEAU-PONTY’S PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROPRIATION OF FERDINAND DE SAUSSURE’S GENERAL LINGUISTICS Merleau-Ponty’s writings include a substantial body of work devoted to a phenomenological description of language. Even though this corpus is of undisputed scholarly interest, it has received relatively limited attention in the literature, perhaps due to the still dominant view that phenomenology is a program limited to a study of pre-discursive experience, and that an individual subject serves as constituting source point of the origin of meaning. Insofar as it is hard to imagine how a study of language would fi t into a program that privileges pre-discursive experience as its immediate fi eld of work, the various developments within phenomenology which take language as a starting point of inquiry may seem like anomalous exceptions to canonical phenomenological pursuits. Correspondingly, there has been relatively little scholarly attention paid specifi cally to Merleau-Ponty’s extensive engagement with the work of Ferdinand de Saussure, and its philosophical implications – including the implications for what phenomenological methods and purposes are. Merleau-Ponty was one of the few if not the sole philosopher who identifi ed a phenomenological dimension within Saussure’s linguistics. This is a remarkable feat considering the dominant structuralist claim to Saussure’s work – or at least to the offi cial doctrine associated with Saussure and laid out in the posthumous redaction of the student lecture notes from the 1907-11 course in general linguistics Saussure taught at the University of Geneva by Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye (published as The Course in General Linguistics). The offi cial doctrine comprises the familiar oppositional pairings: the signifi er and the signifi ed, synchrony and diachrony, language as a structured system of signs (la langue) and speaking activity (la parole). These oppositional pairings have been so tightly associated with both classical Saussureanism and the French tradition of structuralism that it is usual in the scholarship to conceive of structuralism as a direct offshoot of Saussure’s general linguistics. This conception pervades the main established historical and philosophical defi nitions of structuralism in the proper sense, with Saussure routinely fi gured as the Founding Father of the structural school of thought in philosophy and the human sciences.1 However, the offi cial doctrine is largely a posthumous projection of the two editors of the Course who imposed a dogmatic vision of general linguistics as a deductive system composed of axiom-like statements about language (la langue) in order to promote their own conception of general linguistics as a science; the editors effectively suppressed the philosophical, 151 critical-refl ective dimension of Saussure’s general linguistics as developed in the original source materials,2 since it did not fi t the mold of objective science.3 The editors actively usurped the status of Saussure’s direct disciples in order to assume the role of heir apparent and rightful executor of Saussure’s intellectual legacy, but they did not attend a single lecture on general linguistics taught by Saussure, and they discredited the students who did, effectively undermining alternative publication attempts of materials from the lectures, notably by Regard and Meillet.4 In sum, the link between Saussurean linguistics and the structuralist doctrine is not as tight as is usually assumed; not only is the notion that Saussure founded structuralism a retroactive projection (as foundational myths invariably are), it is also, in the specifi c case of the structuralist claim to Saussurean linguistics, an intellectual illusion enabled by the ghostwriting of a book under Saussure’s own name, and by the book’s uncritical reception as the offi cial word. The oppositional pairings: the signifi er and the signifi ed, synchrony and diachrony, language as a structured system of signs (la langue) and speaking activity (la parole) have been regarded as the hallmark of structural activity in philosophy and the human sciences (Barthes, Critical Essays, 1972, p. 213). Importantly, they are not construed as neutral distinctions but rather as violent hierarchies, with the signifi er, synchrony, and structured system positioned above speaking activity, diachrony, and speech. The former are elevated to the status of scientifi c objects in the proper sense and regarded in terms of a closed and autonomous system whose inner workings must be studied independently of any and all contingent realizations of signifying activity in particular linguistic (and other meaning-making) practices by concrete individuals at specifi c points in time. The structuralist privilege attached to an ‘internal’ system of signs as opposed to its ‘external’ manifestations leads directly to an estrangement between structure-based and phenomenological approaches to language, considering that the former render all references to speaking subjectivity and lived experience epiphenomenal and non-scientifi c, while the latter assume them as the enabling ground of signifi cation. One cannot – or so it seems at the fi rst sight – enter the palace of structural linguistics without checking one’s phenomenological hat at the door. The long-lived, institutionalized antagonism between the structuralist (and post-structuralist) and the phenomenological approaches has cemented the view that the two are mutually exclusive. There are many ways to soften this perceived antagonism; one way is historical: the very foundations of structuralism, that is, Saussure’s general linguistics, when examined in light of the authentic source materials, is teaming with references to phenomenological terms and principles (see conclusion for development). Strange as it may seem, Saussure’s linguistics may have been shaped by its presumed opposite: the philosophical tradition of phenomenology. Having considered some of the ambiguities surrounding the phenomenologico-structuralist relation, I will narrow the focus to Merleau- Ponty’s engagement with Saussure’s general linguistics in the remainder of 152 the essay. I propose that Merleau-Ponty’s reading of Saussure’s linguistics as laid out in the offi cial version of the Course is an unusual, if not an uncanny, reading, in that it identifi es a phenomenological dimension within Saussure’s linguistics, which the authentic sources of Saussure’s linguistics corroborate – even though the latter were beyond the philosopher’s own power to know. Merleau-Ponty’s unorthodox reading of a foundational text for structuralism as being broadly compatible with the tradition of phenomenology has been dismissed as an error (Ricoeur, 1967) and a contresens (Mounin, 1968), but perhaps such deviant appropriations of foundational texts are the ones to cherish the most, since they effectively dismantle the received dogmas and offi cial doctrines stuffi ng the cabinets of canonical philosophy – and if the philosophers themselves do not dismantle their dogmas and doctrines, and do not rock their cabinets periodically, then who will? Merleau-Ponty’s reception of the Course is unique in its high tolerance for the complexity if not the paradox of general linguistics, where the distinguished levels of language as system and speech turn out to be reciprocally interwoven and mutually conditioning rather than hierarchically layered and mutually opposed. Unlike the later structuralist readers of the Course whose hermeneutic strategies are put in the service of deriving a scientifi c program for the human sciences from general linguistics and biased in favor of an unexamined notion of scientifi c objectivity, Merleau-Ponty maintains the ambiguous conjuncture of the objective and the subjective in language, in accordance with the precepts of phenomenology. He may, in accordance with the later structuralist readers of the Course, regard general linguistics as foundational for the human sciences and philosophy – but without sacrifi cing philosophical refl ection for the sake of scientifi c success in the process. His approach thus demonstrates that a philosophically complex reading of the Course is indeed possible – albeit it remains exceptionally rare and has been largely eclipsed by the dominant structuralist reception. Merleau-Ponty was in fact concerned with language even before his exposure to Saussure in the late 1940s, as evidenced by “The Body as Expression, and Speech” chapter from the Phenomenology of Perception (1945), where a gestural theory of meaning and expression is laid out as basis for understanding language. It is the encounter with Saussure, however, that inaugurated an over a decade-long engagement with linguistics. One can identify therefore a veritable “linguistic” phase within his overall philosophical trajectory, albeit with a decidedly non-structuralist emphasis on language as living speech. Merleau-Ponty’s engagement with linguistics can be dated back to the 1947-48 Course at University of Lyon on “Language and Communication” (unpublished; summarized in Silverman’s Inscriptions), followed by the 1949- 50 Course at the University of Paris on “Consciousness and the Acquisition of Language” (published under the same title). Between 1950 and 1952 Merleau- Ponty worked on a book-long project dealing with linguistic and literary experience, tentatively titled The Prose of the World (unfi nished and published posthumously). He authored a series of essays dealing to some extent with the 153
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